by Glynn James
Maybe an explosion in one of the power stations? That might explain it, but her nerves told her otherwise. Something was very wrong.
She was near the end of the corridor when another figure darted around the corner. Lisa lifted the gun quickly, aiming, but held back when she heard Hayley’s voice.
“It’s me,” Hayley said.
Lisa lowered the weapon and hurried forward. “You made me jump,” she said. “What the hell is going on?”
She passed Hayley, heading for the main corridor.
“I don’t know,” Hayley said. “I just woke up. There was a loud noise.”
“Yes. I heard.” Lisa moved quickly along the corridor. The whole building was illuminated by just the red emergency lights, but she could see clearly enough. “Some sort of explosion, maybe. Let’s go find out.”
They hurried further along the corridor and turned into the junction where the dormitory wing met the main corridor. Lisa didn’t slow down, heading for the main entrance that would lead them past the conference centre. Other doors opened around them as they passed. Curses followed from the unlit rooms.
The Chaos That Follows
Now…
Jack sat on his bunk, still frowning into the darkness as he peered at the single red light on the door in front of him.
Was it already over? he wondered. Was that it? He sat scratching his head, feeling numb. He’d expected something far more dramatic. He’d thought maybe the bomb would take the roof off; kill him, even. FirstMan had said that he would be safe inside the building, but he hadn’t really believed it would work out that way. It was, after all, a missile – a bomb.
Somehow, he was disappointed. Relieved, certainly, but disappointed all the same. Bombs, in his limited experience of them, were much more devastating than this. They made craters like the ones found out in the Outer Zone ruins, fifty-feet wide and twenty feet deep, the debris cast outwards for miles. And then there were the old bomb sites, the really big ones, ten times that size. He’d seen one of those from a distance but never up close. You never went close to the old bomb sites. People got sick when they did that.
He listened but heard nothing. Not that he expected to. He’d seen how thick the walls were and didn’t expect to hear what was going on outside. There was a thud from somewhere nearby, as if in answer to this puzzle.
Something hitting the wall, he thought, or maybe someone. Then there was a distant shout, muffled, and it ended abruptly.
He pulled himself up onto his feet, shook off the dust, and walked towards the door.
Where did all the dust come from? he wondered. I’m damn covered in the stuff. And yet there was no damage to the room, or at least no apparent damage. Now that he looked more closely, he could see hairline cracks had appeared along the edge of the door, and some of them crept across the walls.
What had FirstMan said?
Fry the electronics.
That was it, and that was all, or so the man had insisted several times. It seemed otherwise, but Jack wasn’t going to complain. He was alive.
And he had no idea what he was supposed to do next. There was no plan for that. He had no instructions to follow the missile hit. He had done his job.
Do I just sit here and wait?
A buzzing sound shook him from his thoughts, and then the single light to switched to green.
What did that mean? Green. That wasn’t one of the two colours he’d seen. Green meant something different.
Green always meant go, didn’t it?
The attack must have been a failure, he thought. The power is back up, and at this very moment, all those people rushing toward the perimeter fence are dropping like bugs, mown down by the defences. Drones were launching, weapons firing.
Damn it.
He couldn’t stay. If the attack failed, and he was left there, they would eventually find out that he played a part in it. He had to get out.
But he couldn’t find the urge to rush. Instead, Jack edged toward the cell door and tentatively reached forward to touch it, expecting a shock or something in reply. But there was nothing.
Unfortunately, there was also no handle on his side of the door.
They were magnetic doors, he thought. There was no handle on the outside, either – just a button. He looked at the small square hatch in the middle and then back at the light. It’s worth a try, he thought, and he grabbed the edge of the hatch. There wasn’t much to get his fingers around, but he was surprised at how little was needed. The door shunted part way open with the slightest pull, but it left him with only a foot or so to squeeze through. Beyond the door, red emergency lights flashed in the corridor.
He peered through, unsure whether to brave it out there or not. A scream from down the corridor answered his concerns, and he stepped back into the darkness. A shape rushed by, dressed in orange overalls.
Goddamn it, he thought. Another of the prisoners?
Then Jack remembered who else they kept in the prison block. Those who had recently lost it and gone crazy, either from sickness or just the work itself. This was where they were kept until they got over whatever it was that was troubling them. Solitary. Locked up with only their own thoughts.
Sometimes people snapped, and they would be kept in the detention block until they either calmed down and could be sent back to work, or, well…he didn’t know what they did with those that didn’t recover, but he couldn’t imagine it was very pleasant.
Now that he thought of it, had he ever actually seen anyone go back to work? Maybe one or two, but most that had been taken in had never been seen again.
More yells came from outside, and two more figures ran by. There was a scuffle along the corridor and a snapping sound. A weapon was fired, followed by the thud of something heavy falling to the ground, and then more yelling.
Jack waited a few more moments before he finally peered through the gap, and he edged around the corner so he could see down the corridor.
One of the orange figures lay on the ground and appeared to be out cold, and beyond that, about ten feet further up the passageway, one of the security troopers lay against the wall. His head jutted out at an odd angle, his neck broken.
There was no sign of the other two orange overalls or the weapon that had been fired.
Jack looked around for anything he could defend himself with but saw nothing. He slowly made his way along the corridor, leaning against the wall, stepping over both bodies, his eyes darting over everything as he kept to the darkest areas.
Finally, he reached the entrance of the detention block, and stepped cautiously out into the foyer. The windows of the main entrance had been smashed out, and another security trooper lay dead on the ground. This one had been shot many times.
Somebody was getting trigger-happy, he thought, and he pictured one of the crazies in orange overalls with a firearm. It wasn’t a good image, and it didn’t encourage him to move on, but he knew he had to.
Maybe they will provide some distraction for the guards while I escape, he thought. Of that he could only hope.
He moved through the entrance hall, ducking behind the desk and peering out of the main windows there. He was about to leave, planning to crawl along the edge of the room where there was a row of chairs, but he spotted something underneath the desk, something that made him move back.
Better, he thought. There, lying on the ground, maybe discarded before it could even be used, was another handgun. One of those used to stun prisoners – or worse. He grabbed it and turned it on its side, examining the switch on the top. There were no markings, nothing obvious, but he was sure the switch determined whether the gun stunned or killed. There was no way to know.
Looking away from the gun, and out onto the road outside, he decided that it was best left to fate. Either setting would have to do, right now.
He thought of FirstMan, standing in his tech room, explaining the assault they planned and Jack’s important part in it. The man had assured him they wished to take the facility wit
h as few injuries as possible on both sides.
But now there was at least two more people out there, armed and totally out of their minds.
This is More Important
Now…
Lisa sprinted along the main corridor, almost colliding with the opposite wall as she hurried towards the armoury. It was a small room that ran alongside the main ops room, with a double door that opened out onto the central corridor. As Lisa reached the doors and slammed the release button, she heard Hayley behind her, breathing heavily.
“Is that weapons fire out there?” Hayley asked.
“Yes,” Lisa said, hitting the release on the door a second time, this time somewhat harder. The door shunted slowly open.
“And the main power is down,” Lisa said.
“What can that mean?” Hayley asked.
Lisa didn’t answer. Instead, she pushed through the gap in the doors, not waiting for them to open all the way. She hurried forward, momentarily stopping at the bank of combat armour suits hanging in their cabinets, and decided that there was no time. She grabbed the nearest assault rifle on the rack, checked to see if it was charged, and turned back to the main doors.
“Better than handguns,” she said. Hayley nodded and grabbed a rifle from rack, also checking the power cell. Even in the dim emergency lighting, Lisa could see that Hayley was terrified. Training or not, the young officer was not combat experienced.
“Is it an attack from outside, do you think?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Lisa said. “It could be a worker revolt.” Then she shook her head. “No. they wouldn’t be able to smuggle weapons away.”
“Maybe it’s just our guards firing,” Hayley said.
Lisa wasn’t convinced. “Too much of it for a few guards suppressing unarmed workers,” she said. “We’d best go and find out.”
They left the armoury and jogged along the corridor towards the main doors. Gunfire could still be heard in the distance, and not just that of the odd weapon. No, Lisa thought. Not workers. But it was confusing. Some of the gunfire was dull, like concussion shots, but then it would be answered by sharper snaps of fire. Deadly shots. Someone out there wasn’t trying to stun, and that could only mean one thing. They were firing at an enemy that needed to be killed. The rules were clear – you didn’t kill workers unless absolutely necessary.
“Shouldn’t we be geared up?” Hayley asked, hurrying behind her. “If we get shot—”
“We don’t have time,” Lisa interrupted as she reached the main entrance. “Just keep your head down. Stay under cover.”
The doors ahead slowly opened as she got within a few feet, and the heat from outside hit her in a dry wave. It was barely dawn, but even at this time of day it could be hot outside. They stepped out onto the dirt road, and Lisa regretted not putting on the armour, even though she knew there was not enough time. The suits had built in temperature control, and she wouldn’t normally even consider stepping outside without being geared up.
Lisa turned in the direction of the heaviest gunfire, off to the south, and started down the road, weapon raised, scanning the buildings ahead. Hayley stayed close to her, crouching low where there was any form of barricade.
A concrete wall ran along the front of the admin building, all the way to next junction, and the pair used it as cover as they made their way towards the perimeter fence.
“The fence must be down,” said Hayley.
Lisa frowned. That was what was different. The gunfire was one thing, but since they had stepped outside she had noticed a change but couldn’t place it. The lack of hum from the generators and the fence.
She turned to look at the large square building directly across from where they stood, on top of which was the communications tower and the power relay for the perimeter fence. Normally there would be an audible hum coming from the relay, and a trio of bright blue lights flicking on and off, but the lights were red and there was no noise. From her position, at the edge of the barricade, she could see down the sloped road that led into the centre of the workers’ area, To the right of that was one of the barracks; to the left, the prison block. Lisa could smell acrid smoke coming from somewhere.
Then she saw it. There was a blackened mark down one side of the outer wall of the prison block, as though the building had been burned from above, and yet there was little structural damage. All along the front, the panel glass windows been smashed out.
Some sort of bombardment? No, she thought. The damage was minimal except for the power being out.
The power was out, and the fence was down.
“This is a full-on assault,” she said, pointing at the burn mark. “Someone targeted and took out the power, and with that, the drones and the fence.”
Hayley looked alarmed. “What do we do?”
“The only thing we can do,” said Lisa. “Go and help with the defence.”
The flash of gunfire was barely visible in the growing daylight, and there was movement between some of the buildings further down the road.
“Come on,” she said, stepping out from behind the barricade just as Governor Jackson and Rogen burst from the alleyway next to the power relay. They hurried up the road in the opposite direction to the fighting.
Lisa took a step towards them. “Governor,” she called.
Jackson stopped in the middle of the street, his eyes wide, but then he recognised Lisa and slumped, leaning over and panting heavily. The man was clearly unfit for running.
“Officer Markell and…your assistant,” he said, in between breaths. “How very fortunate. You two will assist me.”
“Sir,” said Lisa, “the perimeter fence is down—”
“Yes, yes,” interrupted the governor. “I’ve seen on the monitors. There’s been a breach. We’re under attack. There is something important I must do. Documents, data the needs to be safe if this place falls, which from the number of attackers I’ve seen, may be an imminent problem. You will accompany me.”
He started forward, half jogging, half stumbling, followed by Rogen, who glanced at them with a panicked expression.
Lisa turned to Hayley and shrugged.
“The perimeter?” asked Hayley.
“We have our orders,” Lisa muttered.
They both turned to follow the two men.
When the Time is Right
Now…
It had been structure of some kind, Ryan thought. But that had been long ago. He wasn’t sure what kind of building. It certainly hadn’t been made of stone or wood. Large chunks of broken concrete and metal girders met in criss-crosses buried among piles and piles of trash that obscured most of the steel, but it was still easily visible from his perch thirty yards away.
The trash ended in open flat ground that stretched for several hundred yards before it came to an end at the perimeter fence with towers dotted along the outside.
He’d been able to see more clearly a few minutes before, when the ambient light from the glow of the spotlights that surrounded the massive facility had partially lit the ground – and even the trash, to some degree – almost to the spot where he hid.
Some of the Junkers had seen him as he quietly made his way toward a view of the facility, but they must have thought he was meant to be there, because none of them questioned it, and with that in mind, he decided he only had to avoid FirstMan or RightHand, maybe some of the troopers.
But what would they do, anyway? Send him away? They were all busy, and he was left alone. He had climbed up the girders until he almost reached the top, where only the very tip of the frame poked out from the mountain of junk, and found a small, flat area where he could hide and watch the proceedings. He didn’t know what he’d been expecting when the drone approached, the sound a low hum in the distance. Under pale spotlights and the dim glow of the sunrise, he thought the drone would have to fly over the facility. But it hadn’t. He never even saw the thing, it was that far away, but he did see the missile.
It happened so fast – a flash
of movement across the sky, then a loud whump noise as it hit something inside the facility.
All the lights in the sprawling facility began to flicker, and then they went out. The constant humming noise, that he had barely noticed before, ceased, leaving an eerie silence. The entire facility had been buzzing furiously with noise the whole time, but it was so faint that it was almost imperceptible until it was no longer there.
His senses were alert now, and he knew what he was looking for as hundreds of shadows emerged from the junk and swept across the open ground. He wondered then if there might be traps on the ground between the junk and the facility’s outer fence, but told himself that FirstMan, RightHand and the other Troopers would know if there was and would have done something in preparation.
It was irrelevant, now that they were running across the open ground. Part of him wished he could be among them, but he wasn’t even supposed to be there, and it had taken a lot of patience to stay so far behind the mass of Junkers that had headed through the passes, all the way to the facility. He was good at hiding, keeping eyes diverted from himself, but fighting? He didn’t know. Taking out a bug in the junk was one thing. To kill a man?
Gunfire erupted within the walls of the facility. Shots rang out, echoing through the trash canyons, followed by shouting. Ryan thought of Jack. He was in there, right now. He may be locked up somewhere, but the battle would soon reach wherever he was being kept.
But he knew that Jack was alive. He knew it for certain. It was gut instinct. Jack was in one of the buildings, somewhere, still trapped, but he was at least alive.
Ryan reached down to the medical pack he had found when the pair of them had been underneath the building that they found for FirstMan, where they also discovered the handgun at his waist, among many other treasures. They had found the tech that FirstMan had been looking for, and in return FirstMan had looked away as he and Jack took what they wanted from the hidden storeroom.
